hope and believe that we will all be converted, and renounce our heretical opinions, and be reconciled to their church before we die. In which they are as uningenuous as in the rest; for, in truth, whatever they may hope, for which we must take their own word, we have no reason to think they believe any such thing; for, besides the few examples they have of any protestants, eminent for learning, wis dom, or probity, who have lived in that religion, and renounced it at their death, it is in no degree rational to expect it; for, though vicious and loose persons, who have lived in notorious sins, and committed many wicked actions, do oftentimes, upon the approach of death, and those terrible apprehensions which at that time they can hardly be without, reflect upon those enormities and transgressions, which till then they had shut out of their memories, and so are willing to repent, (and of what value such repentance is, God only knows ;) yet, I say, it is not rational to believe, that a man who hath, through the whole course of his life, and upon the strongest exercise of his understanding, contracted an opinion in speculative matters, and been of uncorrupted manners, can, upon the approach of death, disentangle himself, and put off those opinions, without another kind of disquisition than that narrow season will admit. I will not expect, that one of them, who hath so much master

ed his understanding, and over-ruled his sense and his reason upon many disquisitions, as throughout his life to believe transubstantiation, shall at the hour of his death be suddenly enlightened with an evidence that he hath been all that time in the wrong; nor will I believe that his condition is the worse, by dying in the same faith (how erroneous soever) in which he lived. So that those men who seem to expect such a reformation, allege it only to shelter themselves from declaring their judgment contrary to their reason and their conscience. But what then can we think of these men, if they do not in truth think what they make others say, and, it may be, by their infusions, really believe? Can we think them profitable and peaceable members of a protestant kingdom? may we not with some justice doubt that they do in truth not wish we may be saved, against whom they so peremptorily pronounce damnation? It may be thought a great excess of charity and mercy in the crown, if it expects fidelity from them, who will not promise to be faithful; from them, who believe that a foreign prince hath a superior jurisdiction over their conscience, and who hath attempted to deprive the king, and yet will not declare that he hath no such power; that they who protest against ⚫ yielding obedience to the established laws for conscience sake, will not be g'ad, and take the first

opportunity by force, to suppress those laws, and to rescue themselves from a power they are resolved not to obey. It is no reasonable allegation, that protestants enjoy the same liberty in catholic countries which they desire here. Protestants enjoy no liberty in those countries but what is their right, and granted to them by the laws and constitution of the kingdom; they would be glad to be possessed of that, and desire no more; they have the same title to the protection of the law that the catholics have, and may expect in justice the same security from it, though not the same countenance; nor do they refuse to give any assurance, or to enter into any obligation, for their good and peaceable behaviour, and their entire obedience to the crown, that the state requires; nor do they pretend, in the least degree, to owe any to any foreign prince or power: whereas the other complain of nothing but that they may not do that which the law forbids them to do, nor leave that undone which the law enjoins them to do. So far is the case of the one and the other from being the same.

What must we do then to preserve this divided kingdom from falling, the foundations of which are so much shaken, and mines made every day to shake and blow up the rest? There recurs to common reason but three expedients to prevent this woeful ruin and destruction. The first is, that the

catholic party conform itself to the church and to the law. The second, that the protestants renounce their religion, and become Roman catholics. And the third, that the one or the other leave the kingdom, and reside where they find their humours, interest, and affections best complied with. I am one of those who do really believe the church of England to be the best constituted, and to be most free from errors (for errors have always been, and are, and will always be in all churches militant) of any that is now in the Christian world; yet I do not know, but that the belief and exercise of that religion, which in the opinion of all catholics is of the essence of catholic religion, may well consist with the salvation of the pious persons, and with the peace of the kingdom, and with the charity of all: but when the obstinacy of the English catholics shall adhere to a religion of their own making, or made to their hand by the pope, and upon the obligation of that, refuse to submit to those engagements which the wisdom of the state believes to be absolutely necessary to its security, I know not whether I shall call it their divinity or their morality; but whatever it is, it obliges us to resort back to one of the three before-mentioned expedients: and we shall therefore consider which of them is most reasonable to be embraced or consented to. That the protes

tants shall renounce their religion and church in which they have been born, bred, and instructed, which hath been so regularly, deliberately, and peaceably reformed, and is so firmly established by law, cannot reasonably be expected. They must, 1. declare that church to be heretical, and that those that have or shall die in it have no hope of salvation. 2. They must renounce a great part of that allegiance which they have sworn to the king, and deprive his majesty of that absolute supremacy which is his right in his own dominions; and acknowledge a superiority to be in a foreign prince to some purposes, which may overthrow it to all other purposes; which no other Roman catholics are obliged or suffered to believe. 3. They must not only be deprived of the sacrament in that manner that it was instituted by our Saviour himself, but must confess that one half of it was well and necessarily taken away, for so says one of the canons of the council of Trent; though so great a part of the catholic church so publicly have complained against it, and though for above seven hunafter our Saviour's time it was esteemed sacrilege in the very church of Rome to abstain from the cup, and a great part of the catholic church still retain it, and there is a very great difference in the points of conscience or excuse between their submission to this deprivation, who

dred years